The present invention relates to fishing lures, and more particularly, to fishing lures which employ light emitting diodes as light sources to increase the effectiveness of the lures.
It is known that various types of fish are attracted, to a greater or lesser extent, to various stimuli such as movement, light, sound, etc. In particular, lighted or illuminated fishing lures have been the subject of many prior art patents typical of which are U.S. Pat. Nos. 757,077, 1,079,891 and 3,040,462. The above patents are exemplary of fishing lures which have utilized incandescent light sources in attempts to make the lures more attractive to fish. The use of such incandescent light sources is bulky, making the lure oversized and in many cases too heavy. Moreover, because of the intrinsic fragile nature of incandescent light sources, the light sources are easily broken. To overcome this problem it is necessary to protect the lure by locating it internally of the lure such as encasing it in a transparent or translucent lure body or plug. This necessity for protecting the fragile incandescent light source coupled with its inherently bulky nature makes it difficult to use such light sources to make lures which have the desired attractiveness. For example, it is virtually impossible, using incandescent light sources, to make lures having "bug-like" eyes.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,868 to Northcutt discloses a fishing lure which utilizes light emitting diodes (commonly referred to as LED's) as the light source. While the fish lure of the Northcutt patent overcomes many of the disadvantages of the prior art discussed above with regard to incandescent light sources, it is limited in its teachings to the disposition of the LED's internally of the fish lures. This internal location of the LED's greatly minimizes the viewing angle at which the LED can be observed. Thus, it is necessary, as taught in the Northcutt patent, to encase the LED in a translucent body or to utilize fiber optics in conjunction with the LED to effect greater dispersion of the light from the LED.